


imagine there's no heaven

by alucyn



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Explicit Language, F/F, F/M, Fix-It, M/M, Multi, My First AO3 Post, My First Castiel/Dean Winchester Fanfiction, My First Fanfic, My First Work in This Fandom, Please read, Supernatural - Freeform, Supernatural Finale, spn finale, supernatural fix-it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:47:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27713600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alucyn/pseuds/alucyn
Summary: Set directly after the events of 15x18 "Despair" and based on the English Dub. Please support #SomethingtoSay on Twitter and donate to the Castiel Project if you can to protest the blatant queerbaiting and homophobia in the Supernatural Finale.
Relationships: Castiel & Dean Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester, sam win - Relationship
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	1. it's your world now

**Author's Note:**

> Set directly after the events of 15x18 "Despair" and based on the English Dub. Please support #SomethingtoSay on Twitter and donate to the Castiel Project if you can to protest the blatant queerbaiting and homophobia in the Supernatural Finale.

Sam reached out to Jack and gripped him tightly by the shoulder. The world was falling apart around them.

Dean reached over his clenched chest to the handprint on his jacket, placing his own hand over Cas’s blood.

The world was falling apart inside him.

\--

_ring. ring. ring._

“Damn it!” Sam shouted, holding his cell to his ear.

Jack started. He had never heard Sam swear before.

_This is Dean’s other, other, other phone. You know what to do._

“Why isn’t he picking up?” The empty playground echoed his angry words.

Sam stuffed his phone in his pocket.

“Let’s go, Jack.”

_bzz. bzz. bzz._

Dean could feel the phone buzzing on the floor next to him. He was looking at the ground between his knees, but in his peripheral vision he could see it-- the devil’s trap painted on the ground. The room where he had been brought back from demon to human. Where he had come from hell back to the Earth.

Where his angel had left it.

The empty walls reverberated his sobs.

\--

The car’s dashboard rattled driving over a pothole. Jack was looking out the passenger window. They had been driving for fifteen minutes, and so far they hadn’t passed anyone but an empty car lying in a ditch. He didn’t ask Sam about it. He had seen plenty of abandoned vehicles, driving with Sam and Dean and Cas, and most of them were just old wrecks. Besides, he had learned that when humans frown in the way Sam was doing then, it was best not to ask them stupid questions.

\--

_When did I know I was in love with Dean? That’s a stupid question._

Castiel had always been in love with Dean. When Cas first located Dean, tied in miles of chains in the depths of hell, he began to love him.

When an angel meets a human, they see that person’s soul. A damned person, rejected by God himself? Well, an angel sees why he was condemned.

And Cas saw Dean, saw him broken over his brother’s body, saw him at the crossroads selling his soul for a dead boy because Dean could not live without Sam.

Cas saw him on the Fourth of July, 1996, driving to a Gas n’ Sip to steal a bundle of fireworks into the trunk of his father’s car.

Cas saw him in a motel room with odd flamingo wallpaper, tiptoeing around his sleeping sibling at dawn to find the right mixtape with the _perfect_ song for blasting Sam awake.

Cas saw him standing on the curb outside a Stanford dormitory, the red glow of firefighter beacons flashing in Dean’s face, torn between happiness that his little brother was going to come back with him--was not going to reject him--and guilt for tearing Sam from his own happiness.

As an angel, he was required to love all humans. This unwritten rule of divinity was unfamiliar to Cas. He was rarely tasked to visit the mortal world, and knew that many of his fellow angels took little stock in human lives. Pawns, he had heard Raphael call them once, for their Father to play with. Raphael had told Cas never to repeat that, and he never did.

When Cas met Dean in hell, he knew he loved him. He was one of Father’s creations, after all. Love for Dean--no, for humanity--was love for God.

How naive Cas was to not know the difference.

\--

“Sam?” Sam hmmed shortly in response, so Jack swallowed his thoughts. Even though his powers were drained, he had clearly felt something pass behind the car. A presence. Something.

\--

The voice asked Cas again. _When did you know it?_

_I always knew, I told you. Is that enough? It won’t matter anyway. You’ll keep asking for eternity._

Cas was plunged into a memory, so vivid he felt like he could taste the air of it. He knew the Empty had prepared it.

Prepared it just for him, so that Cas could live in his regrets forever.

_Why not?_ Cas watched a younger version of himself ask that question while a younger Dean was pulling a fake FBI badge and stuffing it in the past Cas’s inner coat pocket. Cas’s voice had been so flat back then--not just because he didn’t understand humans, but because he cared so much less for their “fleeting” emotions.

 _Because,_ Dean sardonically replied, _we’re humans. And when humans want something really, really bad…_

At this point Dean reached up and buttoned up younger Cas’s collar. _They lie._

As if the Empty had pushed Cas around from the back, he spun into another memory. One more recent.

 _Look._ This Castiel was lying, bloody, across a couch. _Thank you._ Dean and Sam were looking at his dying, sweat-drenched frame.

 _Thank you._ The past Cas grimaced, but the present Cas was looking across the room at Dean’s slightly younger self.

Cas stopped listening to his old words, searching the face of a broken man to whom he was invisible. Dean was not crying. His face was serious--no. It was stoic. He was playing his part, his part as “Daddy’s Blunt Instrument.” Damn it, Cas _never_ should have said that.

But Cas felt as if he could read Dean’s thoughts in this memory. And Dean was begging Cas to stay alive for him. To stay alive for _them_.

That was what Cas hoped. So he looked at the face that held his whole heart, the face that he would never really see again.

The past Cas was saying, _You’re my family. I love you._

Cas remembered looking straight at Dean when he had said that, but Dean had been looking down. Cas said, _I love all of you._

Maybe it was because Mary was there. He had liked her, or course, but he really had never felt comfortable around her. Some angry part of him had thought that she took the boys away from him. Maybe it was because Sam was there, or maybe it was because Dean wouldn’t look him in the eye.

So he had lied. Hadn’t Dean said that lying was what… humans do?

After all that time, was Cas really human?

\--

It was getting chilly outside. A strange man had just appeared in the field across from the gas station, but the dog didn’t notice him. He was sniffing for a hamburger bun crammed in a crate, squirming inside it to get his tasty snack. The dog didn’t even notice when the store manager, who had come to shoo him away, evaporated into the cold wind.

\--

In another realm, Cas heard the voice start to speak once more.

 _You can ask me all you like! I have plenty of regret for you to remind me of. This is your perfect ending, isn’t it?_ His old angelic fury sounded in his voice.

He heard a laugh, and turned to find the Empty sitting on its throne. It was him again, or at least it was Jimmy Novak's vessel. It was grinning in a way Cas himself never did.

 _I don’t care about your regrets, you ant. You’ve managed to ruin everything._ The Empty gestured beyond him in disgust.

Cas looked back again.

_Hey, Clarence._

\--

Sam braked the car forcefully outside the bunker. Jack lurched forward, but Sam didn’t spare any time to talk to him as he hurried out of the car to the bunker’s entrance. On their way, they had passed four country towns--all completely deserted. One of the intersections they had driven through had a still-steaming car crash without any bodies. Jack had felt his stomach turn at the sights. He thought he had seen Sam brush something off his face. And Jack knew that everything was his fault. It was his fault his world was dead.

Sam opened the bunker door.


	2. from deep beneath

In the bunker, it’s nearly impossible to hear what’s going on in the outside world. The walls are thick. Dean once told Sam he thought they wouldn’t be able to hear a bomb drop from inside of it, to which Sam replied, “Dean, that’s basically the whole point of a bunker.” 

\--

Sam didn’t exactly slam the door when he entered the bunker, but he did close it rather quickly and right in Jack’s face. Jack bristled a bit, even though normally he didn’t get angry. He finished locking the bunker, by which point Sam was at the bottom of the main staircase. 

“Dean!” Sam shouted, his voice cracking. “Where are you?”

“Sam!” It wasn’t Dean responding, but Jack. His frustration showed in his tone. 

Sam spun around, clearly agitated. “What is it, Jack?” 

“I--” Jack hesitated. “It’s nothing.”

Sam didn’t pause as he turned away, moving deeper into the bunker, shouting all the while for his brother.

Jack had wanted to shout. He had wanted to tell Sam to stop being so stubborn and blaming what was happening on himself, which he could tell Sam was doing. He wanted to shout that it was all his fault--his fault for failing to kill Chuck, for being too late to do his job, for not being able to do anything to save Eilleen, to save anyone. But Sam was already in another room, and Jack had to hurry to catch up with him. 

“Dean!” Jack shouted instead. “Cas!”

_ pound. _

Dean started and nearly fell over when he heard the sound. In a second, he was out of his own head, he was in the real world, and the door was being knocked down again, Billie was back, she was back and she was going to take him away too--

“Dean!”

It was Sam.

Sam swung the dungeon door open in the fierce manner of someone who doesn’t expect to find anything behind it. Sam was starting to panic-- _ Dean would have called back by now, he would have at least said something if he had heard me _ \--and in his hailstorm of thoughts he nearly ran past the dungeon altogether. 

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dean. 

“Dean! Oh, thank--Dean, it’s me,” he said, rushing past the bookshelves. 

Then, again,  _ Dean slumped against a wall. Not saying anything. Where’s Cas-- _

All these thoughts in a few seconds.

Sam reached Dean and quickly lowered himself to where Dean was, only to realize, with a deep sigh of relief, that Dean was in fact alive. He was breathing.

But Dean had not looked up at Sam. He was shaking, but not in the solid, I-have-to-be-a-man way that defined Dean Winchester. It was the shaking of something broken. 

Jack found Sam and Dean not a moment later. He slipped a little turning around on the doorframe. He was late. Again. He felt awful for it.

Dean was hurt, and Jack couldn’t do anything about it. Sam was hurt, and Jack couldn’t do anything about it. Cas--

Then Jack was the first to figure it out. A split second afterward, Sam looked up from his hollowed brother to the dismayed nephilim. They shared an understanding.

_ Our angel is gone.  _

\-- 

_ Meg?  _

Castiel remembered her voice.

_ I’m here too, little bro. _

Cas had turned around, but instead of the welcomed nostalgia he expected from seeing Meg…

_ LUCIFER?  _ The archangel was grinning sardonically at Cas.

Cas gritted his teeth. In the Empty, you couldn’t really talk. Or hear. Or feel anything, at least not in the way a human vessel does. But Cas couldn’t help it. He had been in a physical body too long.

He grabbed the devil by the throat. 

_ YOU ABSOLUTE MONSTER. WHAT YOU’VE DONE TO DEAN--TO SAM AND DEAN--NO, TO YOUR SON, AND YOU THINK YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO SAY ANYTHING TO ME-- _

_ Clarence.  _ Meg wrenched Cas’s extended arm down. She sounded slightly disappointed in him. 

Lucifer disappeared and reappeared about five feet away from Castiel. 

_ Guess I gotta keep my distance _ . Luci had the same wicked tone from all his years ruling hell, but suddenly Cas realized he sounded like something else, too. He sounded carefree.

Cas was starting to form his thoughts.  _ What’s going on in here?  _ he asked Meg.  _ Why are you--why are you here? _

_ She’s a  _ demon _ , feather boy. She dies, she gets stuck here. That’s what demons  _ do _.  _

Cas glared at his brother again.  _ I was referring to the fact that you shouldn’t be awake. It’s unusual, it’s not what it…  _ Cas glanced back at the Empty, but it was gone. 

Meg smirked at Cas.  _ All these years spent hanging around those hunter boys, and they never taught you how to see what’s right in front of your eyes? _

\--

Sam reached out, holding Dean’s arm, and tried to level with his lowered gaze. He could feel Dean’s frame shaking, and Sam had never seen his brother like this before. Yet nearly a second after Sam touched him, Dean completely stiffened.

Still looking down, Dean whispered, “Sorry, Sammy.”

“It’s okay.”

Dean put his hand against the wall behind him and moved to get up. 

“Dean?” Jack hesitated, then reached out to support Dean as he stood.

Gruffly, Dean pushed Jack’s hand to the side. 

“I’m fine,” he said. Then Dean looked Jack squarely in the face, which he so rarely did, and his tone softened. “I mean, thanks, Jack.” 

Dean thanking Jack. The day had brought newer things, and would bring newer still.

\--

The vast abyss of the Empty remained, but for the first time Castiel noticed that it was not, in fact, empty. If distance had existed there, he would have described what he saw as an empyrean plane of angels and demons stretching miles in every direction. Above him, below him, to the sides--most were spaced far from one another, staring without focus into the blackness, but Cas saw a few fighting from afar. 

_ Warriors of heaven, still believing they are doing God’s work _ , Cas thought sadly. 

_ Demons, too,  _ Lucifer chimed in, as if he could read Cas’s expressions.  _ Unfortunately they were unaware that I didn’t--ah, how would your beloved Winchesters put it--give a flying fuck about their loyalty.  _

Cas glared at Luci, and asked,  _ Why is everyone-- _

_ Awake?  _ Meg finished his question. 

_ I suppose,  _ Luci had reappeared behind Cas,  _ it’s because you went and made my son into your little weapon, and when he showed up here, well, boom.  _ He flicked his fingers like a small explosion as he wandered between the two of them. 

_ Jack was as much your son as you were an obedient one. I will never forgive you for using him.  _ Cas’s fists were clenched again.

_ O--kay!  _ Meg shoved both Cas and Lucifer apart; she didn’t touch either of them, but somehow employed demons’ telekinetic powers. This surprised Cas almost as much as it did when he landed--or rather, slowed to a halt of no accord of his own--several feet away from her. 

She was saying,  _ Your angelic catfights lost intrigue millenia ago. You two can’t do shit to each other here, so. Cool it, boys. And I think it’s high time we learned what the hell kind of problems you and the hunters are causing on Earth.  _

Cas looked down--one of the first mannerisms he had learned from Dean, who told him it meant he was “embarrassed or something, I don’t know! Jeez, Cas.” Cas had learned eventually that it also meant he was ashamed. 

Meg asked again.  _ What happened, Clarence? _

\--

Dean walked out of the dungeon much more quickly than Sam expected, given how he had looked a moment ago. In fact, it took him a minute to register him leaving, and Sam once more had to run to keep up with his older brother. 

He followed him upstairs. The first place Sam looked was in the kitchen. On the counter by the fridge, there was a freshly opened beer bottle. Sam could see a whisper of smoke curling out of it. But it was full. 

Then Jack called, “Dean! Wait! Please wait!” Sam rushed to the library. 

Dean was pacing, and it was clear he couldn’t decide if he was staying or going. He looked up at the stairs to the exit, and back at Jack, then--as if seized once more by the fury of the Mark of Cain--he slammed his fist into the table and yelled so thunderously that the lampshades across the room trembled.

“God _ dammit  _ Sam! What happened out there?”

“I could ask you the same question!” Sam spat back. “The way you’re acting--like a child--you…” 

Then Sam seemed to recollect what he and Jack had realized a few minutes back, and quickly switched tracks. 

“Billie got to them.” 

“It’s not her. It was Chuck,” Dean said.

“What?” 

“Oh. That does make sense,” Jack said.

Sam continued, “Well, the hunters--everyone we brought to the silo. They’re all gone. And, as far as we can tell--”

“He’s killed all of humanity,” Jack finished, matter-of-factly. “Except for us.”

Dean swallowed, steadying himself on a chair. “Wiping the slate clean.”

“We don’t actually know for sure if everyone’s gone--” Sam started.

“No, I can feel it. Sense it. I felt something big hanging around when we were driving back, and it  _ must  _ be Chuck, but aside from him… there’s no one else left.”

Sam looked at Jack in confusion. “I thought your powers were gone, Jack.” 

“Hmm. I don’t know. After I came back from the Empty, I keep feeling more and more like my old self.” He stretched out his hand towards the pencil, upon which a few spare pencils laid. They didn’t move. “Not completely, though.”

Dean was in the corner of the room, working with an antique radio Mick Davies had fixed up a few years ago. Turning the dials, different tones of static played. He couldn’t land on a working station or even patch his way through to any of the Men of Letters bases. At the same time, Sam had pulled out his phone and started working his way down his contact list, pulling up voicemail after voicemail as he made his calls.

Jack stood awkwardly across the room. He was secure in his knowledge of their reality, but he knew Sam and Dean would have to realize it on their own. He hovered for a few minutes, then felt it was better if he left the crow’s nest. 

Soon, he was sure, Chuck would arrive. Either at the bunker, or at some destination of his own choosing, Jack’s grandfather would be there to collect his favorite characters. He was deeply worried. If this was what God had made of the world, would he be able to let the Winchesters live for much longer? Would Jack be able to protect them? Or would he be too weak?

Jack found himself by Cas’s room as if pulled by a magnetic force.

It was neat. Quaint. One might even say uninspired. 

Cas’s bed was neatly made. Of course, the most he had probably ever done was sit on it. Cas and Jack had spent many nights in the galley or library pouring over lore, or even just waiting for the boys to wake up. 

His nightstand was empty. Jack walked over to his closet, slightly ajar, and looked inside. There was a pair of shoes, some spare shirts, and a few ties. He smiled a bit to see that Cas did, in fact, have more than one trench coat in his possession. Three in total, it seemed--though there were only two in the closet.

There was little else to see in the angel’s room. Bare walls, a dusty chair in the corner. Jack looked over at Cas’s desk, and, hoping he wasn’t intruding too much into Cas’s privacy, ventured to open it’s drawers. One had a spare angel blade. Another had an empty gun and a few haphazardly-thrown cartridges. 

In the last drawer, perfectly placed in the middle and not covered by the dust enveloping the rest of the bedroom, was a small cassette tape.  _ Deans top 13 Zepp TRA XX _ . 

Jack had seen these before in the Impala, and had witnessed Dean play them on many occasions, though he didn’t fully understand why Dean liked them so much. He wondered what it meant to Castiel, but he thought he knew.

Carefully tucked under the mixtape were two photographs. One Jack had seen before. It was a picture of his family with their old friends: this world’s Bobby, who Jack had never met, and two others he knew were Jo and her mother, Ellen. The other photo was Castiel standing next to Claire Novak. He could tell it was Cas, he looked a bit sad and weighed down even though he was trying to smile. Claire looked slightly younger than he knew her to be. Jack flipped the print over, and scrawled on the back in what was definitely Cas’s handwriting (though not nearly as neat as it normally looked),  _ your fault. _

Jack delicately replaced the photographs, but after some hesitation, put the cassette on the top of the desk. He reasoned that if Dean ever came back in here, he would want to find it. 

Sam was in the galley filling two glasses of water. He nodded at Jack as he entered and passed him a glass of his own. The two of them returned to the library, where Dean was sitting in one of the chairs, his right arm stretched out over the table. His face was pressed down against it, as if he were in pain. 

_ Well,  _ Jack thought,  _ not as if.  _

Sam slid his brother a glass but was met with no reaction. He sat down across from his brother and held his head up with one of his arms, monotonously tracing his fingertips across the corner of the table. 

Jack once again found himself standing, not knowing what to say, across from the silent hunters. He cleared his throat. 

“What--what are we… going to do? What’s the plan now?”

Sam breathed out a little bit of a laugh and ran his fingers through his long hair. 

Dean rubbed his eyes and looked up at him. “Don’t you get it, Jack? There’s no plan. We lost. We’re done. There’s nothing  _ to  _ do.”

“The last men on the last day on Earth,” Sam muttered. 

Jack stared at the two of them. “You can’t say that. You--you’ve saved the world hundreds of times before!” At this Dean laughed curtly, but Jack just became more emphatic. “You’ve tried giving up over and over. Yes, you! Dean! And Sam. But you’ve never really given up. You’ve always kept fighting!”

“Well I’m done!” Dean yelled back at him. Jack took a step back “It’s not worth it anymore. I’m done.” He stood up forcefully, knocking his chair over with a crash, and left the room.

\--

Jack had left the bunker, and for the first time Sam didn’t stop him or ask any questions when he walked out. There was a modest hill five minutes away from, and Jack walked up there in a stormy silence. As his feet fell on the ground, the grasses beneath him browned and died instantly. At first he stopped, disturbed.

_ But I’ve always known I was a curse _ , he thought.  _ So fuck it _ . Even in his head, swearing sounded like Dean’s voice. 

The wind wrapped around him powerfully where he sat at the top of the hill, perched on a wide stump of a chopped fir. The trees and the undergrowth surrounding him had shriveled. The noises echoing in his head grew more wicked by the second, but something about this moment--through all the guilt and violence tearing at him--was giving him a feeling of power and control that was utterly new to the nephilim.

\--

“So we’re giving up.” It was a statement, poorly disguised as a question. Dean had re-entered the library. Two hours had passed, at Sam’s guess. He was peering over his phone screen. He and Eileen had made a shared album when they started dating, adding a photo to it every time they saw each other. He turned his phone over. 

He didn’t answer Dean, just tilting his head in agreement and tightening his lips to the side, one of his individualizing mannerisms. 

“Good.” Dean pulled two bottles of beer out, but he didn’t pass one to his brother. He sat down roughly, and in two drinks finished the first bottle. He wiped his mouth off.

Sam decided not to say anything about Dean drinking. Whatever his brother was thinking, he agreed. Nothing mattered anymore. 

Dean started the second bottle a minute later, coughing a bit. 

“It makes you think,” the eldest Winchester was saying, “if we shouldn’t have just gone with Michael and Lucifer and the divine plan or whatever, all those years ago. If the world wouldn’t be better off if we had just played our parts, done what we were told. What Chuck wanted from us.”

Sam seemed to be mulling it over. “We wouldn’t have met Jack,” he put in. “Or, Charlie. Garth. Kaia. A lot of people. You wouldn’t have had all that time with Cas.”

Dean shifted uncomfortably in his seat and moved his face away from Sam’s view, but he didn’t say anything.

“Dean,  _ what happened? _ ” 

No response.

Sam persisted, “ _ Please. _ Billie didn’t just disappear, at least.”

“Fine. We--we went back to Billie’s library. She was waiting for us. She told us about Chuck. I cut her, but I couldn’t kill her. I just fucked it up. So, Cas and I…” Dean’s sentences were choppy and forced, but he kept on. “We got back here, to the bunker, but she followed us. Said she had been waiting to kill me for a long time, I guess. To kill both of us. We put up warding in the dungeons--well, Cas did--but it wasn’t good enough. Uh…” Dean had no idea how he was supposed to say it.

“Cas summoned the Empty and it took him and Billie,” he finished. 

Sam paused for a second, then said, “Wait, what? The Empty?”

Dean nodded, but still didn’t give any more detail. 

“Why would he--how was he  _ able  _ to summon it?”

Taking another deep draught from the bottle, Dean Winchester sighed. 

“It’s complicated.”

Sam smacked his hand on the table. “Don’t ‘it’s complicated’ me, Dean! What aren’t you telling me?” But then he saw his elder brother, whose eyes were filling up with tears.

“I just--I can’t tell you, Sammy.” 

With a softened tone, Sam replied, “You can tell me anything. You’re not very good at saying what you mean, Dean, but I’m still here.”

Dean’s voice was a bit broken. “I guess when Cas came back from the Empty, the last time, he made a deal. The--the stupid angel. He made a deal. And I think it was that he would have to return to the Empty, or that he could summon the Empty. Of course, he never bothered to tell me about any of this. But he could only do that--he would only be taken--if he ‘experienced true happiness.’ Or, I don’t know, that’s what he said.”

He glanced at Sam for less than a second. Sam was starting to think he knew where this was going.

“Before the Empty showed up, he was talking to me. And I--apparently, that was what gave him true happiness.

“Sam, he told me he loved me.”

\--

“He told me he loved me and, and I…” Dean sounded more nervous than Sam remembered ever seeing him. “Then he pushed me out of the way, and… was gone.”

Sam’s brain was playing the words  _ say something, say something,  _ over and over again as if on a loop. He felt speechless--not because he was surprised, of course. This was something he had expected for a long time. But he never expected to hear it from the deadened, numb version of his brother that he saw before him. And he didn’t know what else Dean had to say. He wanted to tread lightly, but that intention alone made him feel worse. What Dean needed was support, but how the hell was Sam going to be sure he could give it to him in the way he wanted?

Dean turned around in his chair again, his flushed face completely hidden. Sam looked across at him, and saw it for the first time. Over Dean’s shoulder. A handprint of blood, in the same place as the scar Dean had had when he was pulled from hell. 

Sam’s hand was over his mouth. Almost in unison, the brothers stood: Dean, to escape from the shame he felt at himself in that moment, and Sam, to reach out to him. 

Dean froze, in shock, when Sam pulled him around by the arm and into a hug, but then he just broke into sobs. 

“Sam, I never got to say it back. I never got to--to tell him that I loved him too. That I have for so long. And that I never thought that he would ever be happy with me, so I did nothing. And now he’s gone, Sammy. Cas is gone. He’s gone and I don’t think he’s coming back. I never got to tell him I loved him.”

“I know, Dean. I know. I’m so sorry.”

They stayed like that for a while. Sam, the boy with demon blood, who still wouldn’t let himself give in to all the pain he was feeling. Dean, the righteous man, who couldn’t hold himself together any longer. 

Both of them without the ones they loved.

After a few minutes, Sam said, “Dean, I just want you to know that I--I don’t care about you and Cas. You’re my brother, my best friend, and I love you. I just want to make sure you know that. That it doesn’t matter.”

Dean just nodded. Sam hoped he had gotten the words right, but he had.

\--

It was after two in the morning when Jack wrenched the bunker door open. On the stairs, he looked down to see that Dean was back, sitting in the library. It looked like Sam had gone to bed. 

Dean glanced up at Jack, then returned to the beer bottle that Jack could see reflected in the light of the solitary lamp. 

Jack walked to his room through the side hallway.

Dean’s mind was slipping in and out of fully-formed thoughts. Telling Sam, well, he was glad he had done it. And his reaction hadn’t played out like Dean had been scared it would. He ran the bottle across the polished wood and thought of what John would have done to him if he had been watching their conversation. 

After Jack walked away, Dean reached under the tabletop and pulled out one of the knives taped there in case of an attack. He held it up to his face and ran his thumb gently along the blade. He stopped once it broke skin, flicking the blood from his finger. Then, in a decisive moment, he put the knife tip to the wood table. 

_ JACK _ . He carved the boy’s name next to his, Sam’s, and his mother’s. 

And, finishing what was left of the alcohol,  _ CASTIEL.  _

That night, Dean cried for his angel until he passed out.

\-- 

Inside of a closet, it’s nearly impossible to hear what’s going on in the outside world. The walls seem so thick. Dean stayed there because he couldn’t hear what the world was telling him all those years.

It was telling him, “I love you.”


End file.
